No roof felt... can I pick your brains?

[shagster]

I live in an old house with no roof felt. The roof is sound, no leaks no dampness up there. I have just one problem: Dust. Everything in the attic gets covered in it. It's so bad I left a Henry up there, so I can vacuum off things before I bring them down. I've never seen so much dust in normal attics with felt, so I assume the lack of felt to be the reason.

My options seem to be:

1. Get sheet material (what I'm not sure) to fix to the inside of rafters. Storing up problems? Maybe not if it's breathable, but could improve things cheaply.
   
2. Pay a company to install roof felt.
   
3. As above + add insulation as well. More heat/cold sensitive stuff can be stored in the attic should be lower bills as a bonus. Some roofers say this is required if adding felt, I'm not sure about that.
   
4. Pay company to do the above but add PV panels and solar heated water. I wanted to do this anyway, but tradespeople who specialise in just one job tend to be more competitive. In theory I could save the cost of the scaffolding for the PV panels, but whether the company passes that on to me is another matter. Am I better off not bothering with PV at this stage? Technology is improving every year so I'm not in a big hurry.

Further to this, my roof is far from straight. Should I consider trying to get it straightened or even replaced as part of this? I had a structural engineer round to check it and he says it's not going anywhere, it just looks like sh*t Is that the kind of thing that needs to be fixed for PV, or can they just put the panels to follow the roof. I guess those solar shingle things are out if your roof is all over the place. They don't seem to have taken off anyway.

The other problem is that in my area there are a lot of cowboy roofers and I don't have one single recommendation from any friends. I'm wondering if there's such a thing as a national roofing chain that will give a decent warranty without arguing the toss over it.

Thanks!

 

[Keithmac]

Is it a slate roof?.

 

[shagster]

No, it's tiles

 

[^woody^]

You're options are tack some breather membrane on the underside of the rafters to remedy your principle issue with dust, or bite the bullet and sort out the tiles externally plus any of the additional work.

Members of the NFRC should be reputable and insured.

 

[Tigercubrider]

I helped a mate add a barrier in his roof space.
It was a tyvek product that allows some air movement but is waterproof , all we did was to staple it to the roof rafters starting up at the top so any driven rain would flow downwards, with subsequent layers overlapping inside the attic.
Most loft spaces are dusty to an extent, sealing it up totally creates issues.